Simple Steps

You sure learn a lot when you jump in and decide to do something like this. In just one week, I've already been challenged and educated. One thing I've learned is to never say what I'll be writing about next week, there are too many variables and too many changes occurring in my thinking on this project. So unfortunately, I'll be postponing the blog about RV buying until I've actually bought one. That just seems like a better idea to me. And this week, I'll be writing about simplicity instead. It occurred to me that writing about the cart before the horse that drove it would be like, well, putting the cart before the horse, and we're not going anywhere with that configuration. So let me share with you some resources that took me from a chaotic life that kept me from my dreams, to a being a pretty lean machine these days,  that makes everything seem possible.

Eight years ago I attempted this whole "on the road" thing for the first time - completely on a whim and with so little planning that I'm ashamed to remember it. I packed way way way too much stuff into my RV - trying to think of everything we may possibly want. Seriously, my kids can remember having to move boxes out of the way to move around in the space, or use the bathroom or their beds. We had a TV and tapes - yes, vcr tapes, and a vcr. We had a game cube with games for the kids and I had stuffed so many books in alongside the beds that we probably had an extra hundred pounds in books alone. We had a stock of food and alcohol and all my art supplies, tools, clothing that we never wore, craft supplies we never used. And more than that, all the stuff that was left in storage, that had to be paid for and moved around when we decided to not be on the road anymore - it cost over a hundred dollars a month to store things that I later gave away, or sold for very little money because I couldn't figure out how to get it where we now lived.

A friend of mine gave my daughter a book about the women traveling on the Oregon trail and she would read it aloud as we drove that trail. I remember vividly reading about these women needing to leave furniture and beloved belongings along the way because horses had died and the remaining beasts could no longer carry the whole burden. We marveled at their ingenious solutions to packing - eggs packed in sacks of flour - and empathized with their agony, leaving heirlooms sitting alongside the trails and watching out the back of their wagons as they disappeared in the distance.We were living these same experiences. It was easy to empathize. I learned a lot from that time. And you would think that my pack-rat ways would be changed forever, but it actually took me several more years to take that inspiration and do something with it.

The first step was noticing that it was a problem and that trip sure helped me figure that out. After realizing that any further travel would really require a full life overhaul, and getting past my brain's internal chatter justifying repeatedly that all artists are this way - that chaos is part of the process (this is a lie, by the way - it actually keeps you from your process) - I began to look for resources that would help me to streamline. This exploration led me to a better understanding of how these belongings were stifling me and how they were even related to my health - both emotional and physical.

I found a yahoo group that revolved around the concept of minimalist living or simplicity. What drove me to that step first was how I felt when I was in the home of a friend. He had a very streamlined, organized and minimalist home. He made minimalist art, and I felt completely at peace in his presence and in his home. From that first email list, I was introduced to the excellent blog of Leo Babauta, called Zen Habits. For me, finding this blog was the first step in understanding what I wanted. Leo's words are simple, and reading his streamlined blog made me feel as I did in my friend's home - peaceful. From there, I learned about GTD, Getting Things Done - a productivity book by David Allen. I bought the book and tried to work with it for a while to organize my life. I learned a lot of useful things and I recommend the book for getting your whole life in order, but it does read a lot like a business manual and that's a bit of a turn-off for artsy folks like me. I think Leo has pulled some of the best of the book into a more streamlined version and is giving it away on his website, but I still suggest the original for a few important things.

Managing my time and my projects came next and GTD helped a lot with that, but I have to tell you that it was not until I began to get rid of my things that my life really turned around. For me, dismantling a mindset that had been ingrained throughout my childhood was extremely difficult. Just the act of constantly reminding myself  that this is not who I am, but what I was is almost a full time job. Regularly reading blogs like Zen Habits and joining mailing lists like Fly Lady helped me to make new habits that stuck so well that I no longer needed the daily reminders. Good resources expect you to grow out of them. I think that's the best sign that you're onto something good.

Fly Lady is a website that I learned about from some people who hated it. And it's not really my cup of tea either (sorry Fly Lady). But the daily reminders in my email box and the way of looking at cleaning and decluttering - set your timer for fifteen minutes and pick a small area to do so, and think of your home as having quadrants that you clean only one of each day - changed how I approached the daily routines. I have managed to get rid of nine-tenths of my wardrobe and useless belongings using the techniques learned there. This means that only the things I adore and use all the time will go on the road with me, and only the things I adore that I can't use all the time will be taking up storage space. I can't relay how happy that makes me. I just rented a five by ten foot storage unit for thirty five dollars a month - inside and air conditioned. I've never been able to afford a climate controlled unit before because I always needed the largest they had and was already paying over a hundred dollars a month. I think I'll have room to spare this time.

Once I began to look at my belongings based on how much I loved them and how useful they are to me, I began giving a lot of stuff away - making a lot of other people very happy. This eased the pain of thinking about all the money I'd wasted buying things that were not amazing. But there was that little pinch and that pinch taught me to never again buy a single thing that was not more amazing than the things I already owned. And I've implemented the tried and true method of "one in/ one out" - if I buy something, I have to get rid of something else. This keeps me from buying anything frivolous. I've developed an intuition about objects now - I can hold it out and ask myself, "will this add to my life, or hold me down?" and the answer I first think is the right one.

For a while I was on a mailing list related to the project The Compact which you can read more about here. The Compact is a pledge you make to buy nothing new for a year (or two). There are rules and certain allowances (for food and a small number of "cheats") but essentially, you pledge to buy nothing new. There are mailing lists for support, to confess your cheating, and to get guidance. You don't need these but having support for any new habit goes a long way towards keeping you on task long enough to let it take hold. On The Compact, you can buy used items at thrift stores and yard sales, get freebies on freecycle or from free boxes or friends. So, this doesn't directly help you with simplifying or streamlining your life. However, although I've never been a big mall shopper, I was shocked to learn how many of my new item purchases were made without even thinking about other options until I took this pledge. I resisted the urge to buy a food processor and then bragged to a friend about my first "compact" moment - the next day, he brought me a small food processor he'd found in the free box at his work. Through the process of thinking about every purchase I made, I became aware of not needing things as much as my initial thought told me I did. I undid a piece of the brainwashing. And that's an important step.

Somewhere around this time, I began to rethink everything having to do with property. My family decided to have an all thrift Christmas to keep to The Compact - we all took fifty dollars and went thrift shopping for each other. And we held it after the actual holiday so that more people we loved could gather at a lower air fare. Then we began thinking about why we let someone else tell us when to have a holiday - or even to have a holiday at all. Why weren't we just making up our own holidays? So now we do. Sometimes we have "after valentines" holidays where we give each other deeply discounted gorging amounts of candy or flowers. We're no longer tied to what we must do. And it's hard for any of us to remember why we ever were.

This brings me to the final streamline focus - the body. We've never been an unhealthy group - I, personally, have always had some sort of exercise routine, tried to eat healthy - didn't eat a lot of sweets, etc. Probably like most moderately healthy people. A couple of years ago, I had my first run in with a real health problem and the medical industry that exacerbated my issue. I was put on a steroid medicine to treat adult onset asthma and began developing all sorts of side effects and feeling generally less healthy - although it did, of course, solve the asthma symptoms, while I was taking it. When I would forget, I would gasp for air - and it showed no signs of ever getting better. In fact, the doctors suggested that I'd probably be on the inhalers for life. Two hundred dollars a month and steroids that lower my immune system - for life! The doctors were not trying to cure my illness, they were treating the symptoms and that is mostly what our medical industry does. I thought for a bit on this and determined that not one time have I ever gone into a doctor's office and come out with a cure, except in the case of antibiotics. And they have their own special issues.

I began my search into alternative medicines about the time I developed a steroid related UTI - a quick, sharp and painful one that made me consider a trip to the ER. Sending a friend to get as much cranberry juice as could be found, I typed in "home remedies for UTI" in my trusty google search bar and came up with the unlikely combination of a small amount of baking soda dissolved in a glass of water, but being desperate, I tried it and in moments, all the pain was gone. I began to search for other cures for things that ailed me, and natural cures for the adult onset asthma and found vitamin therapy, ideas about ph balance causing bacterial and viral infections, and information about candida that was suspiciously close to many of the ailments I had. From this information, I decided to make some serious changes in my life. What could it hurt?

I cut sugar from my diet as completely as I'm able. This is no easy task in this world. You cannot eat any processed food without getting sugar or High Fructose Corn Syrup, which works on your body the same as sugar. This one step made me feel so much better that I kept making more and more steps. I put my family on the South Beach Diet and now we eat very similarly to this most of the time. You can learn a lot about how to eat on that website without even buying the books. You can then type in whatever your favorite foods are and "South Beach" in a search engine to find recipes that fit that program. Unlike other diets, this one actually is a sustainable way to eat and the phases train your body to begin to eat better for life. It's the only one I will ever recommend. My family, now, have collectively lost about seventy pounds and have all taken up hiking - I'm up to a regular three times a week. We walk to the store and my daughter and I do yoga at home. We play with hoola hoops and poi and dance and have learned to love the movement of our bodies. And I haven't been on the inhaler in over six months - all the signs of asthma are gone. These things didn't happen over night. They happened by changing one small thing, and then another, and another. I'm not a doctor, and I can't dispense medical advice, but I can tell you that industry supports itself and to all those I love, I suggest that natural cures will usually (but not always) help you to get closer to health than drugs made by companies that make their money by selling you more drugs, and the people they bribe to dispense them.

Now we're getting ready for this new adventure - we're healthy, love to explore, love the outdoors, and can look forward to some amazing hiking on our journey. We eat much less, so we have to carry much less food. We eat a lot of fresh veggies and will enjoy exploring new farmer's markets or maybe even helping farmers pick vegetables and fruit in fields we pass for trade. We have pared down our belongings so much that we will have with us only useful things we love, and will pay to store only a few other useful things we love. There is peace in this journey. There is peace in the preparation for this journey. And there will be peace when we settle again.

I sincerely hope that some of the resources here will bring peace to some of you reading this as well. We're all in this together.